> Explain how the German autobahn has fewer collisions than US high ways with lower than 85th percentile speed limits if the lower speed limits are such an advantage.
There is no reason in the world to assume that US drivers have the same level of driving skill as German drivers.
> the notion of Germans being intrinsically superior
By "German drivers" I mean drivers who are trained, licensed and insured in Germany. There is nothing "intrinsic" about it, and it has nothing to do with genetics or national origin.
Those are the minimum standards. After meeting them, you can receive a learner’s permit at age 16, that allows you to drive under the supervision of a licensed driver. Parents will sometimes make things even more rigorous. My mother for example required me to drive her under supervision nearly every day for an entire year before she let me proceed to the next step for my license. This was in addition to study at a driving school that was already beyond the state’s minimum standard.
Then you must pass both written and practical exams. Interestingly, the minimum age for this varies. If you have gone through much more rigorous training (e.g. by studying at a driving school), you may receive your license at age 17. If you have not, you must wait until age 18. This encourages people to exceed the minimum standard for training.
After you have your license, if you do not take driver education courses every 3 years, you face higher insurance rates, so nearly everyone does. Finally, if you commit a few driving infractions within an 18 month span (which causes 11 points to be placed on your license), your license is suspended. Insurance rates rise if even a single point is added, so there is pressure to avoid even a single infraction. As for insurance, it is mandatory and the requirements are among the highest in the U.S.
It is unclear to me how German drivers would be more skilled than drivers trained/licensed/insured in NY per your phrasing. You have not given a single concrete example of anything that would make them better drivers.
That’s a straw man. Nobody is saying Germans have some “safe driving” gene, but rather that German culture has higher standards for driver training and enforcement. I’m sure that if the United States would see incident rates decline significantly if we made drivers licenses harder to get and easier to lose before a fatality, or simply ended our effective trillion-dollar annual subsidy of driving and required people to carry insurance coverage sufficient to actually compensate the other parties.
The way he worded his reply suggested some sort of intrinsic superiority that by definition could not be replicated anywhere else.
That said, if we can replicate Germany’s success in vehicle safety in the U.S., we should, yet discussion on vehicle safety seems to justify increasingly draconian bandaids on the status quo rather than just mimicking what the Germans do. It is also easy to say that they have higher standards, yet no one has stated precisely what these standards are.
In NYS, we have annual mandatory vehicle inspections. Driving an uninspected vehicle is illegal and you cannot get the inspection certificate for your windshield unless your vehicle passes. The state requires a driving test to get a license and effectively forces everyone to take driver education courses every 3 years by raising insurance rates if they do not. It is unclear to me what is done in Germany that is not already done in NYS as far as driver education and vehicle road worthiness are concerned. NYS might even be ahead of Germany if Germany does not have any incentive for regular driver education.
> I’m sure that if the United States would see incident rates decline significantly if we made drivers licenses harder to get and easier to lose before a fatality, or simply ended our effective trillion-dollar annual subsidy of driving and required people to carry insurance coverage sufficient to actually compensate the other parties.
You just described NYS. It has some of the highest insurance coverage requirements in the U.S.:
Losing your license is fairly easy to do here. There is a points system. Reach 11 points, and you lose your license. Reaching 11 points is fairly easy to do. Having any points on your license increases insurance rates, so there is a strong incentive to avoid it.
> The way he worded his reply suggested some sort of intrinsic superiority that by definition could not be replicated anywhere else.
This is something you read into the comment. Given how Germany is tied with Japan for the assumption that they place a higher priority on attention to detail and safety culturally, I would suggest the more parsimonious explanation thar they were simply echoing a stereotype Americans have observed for at least a century.
While you’re apparently very proud of NYS you’re simply drawing a false equivalence. Perhaps NY is above average for the United States but having driven there many times I had to laugh at the idea that the bar is very high having seen people grossly speeding, running red lights, using the highway should or parking lanes to pass illegally, driving around with illegally tinted dark windows, double parking, or parking on the sidewalk. Even if I ignore upstate and only compare NYC to Munich, it’s not even in the same league – especially since some of the biggest scofflaws around NYC are the cops who park their personal vehicles blocking the sidewalks and are clearly more interested in hassling pedestrians and bicyclists.
On to insurance, it is simultaneously possible for NYS to have higher insurance requirements and still be lower than what’s needed. American healthcare is significantly more expensive than our peer countries so we need much higher insurance to compensate the people hit by drivers, especially because private insurance means a massive cost problem if the victim is unable to work. Studies have estimated that Americans subsidize driving by roughly a trillion dollars a year by not requiring drivers to pay for their choices, so even the most expensive states aren’t high enough.
I was comparing NYS’ standards for vehicles and drivers to Germany’s alleged standards. So far, no one has given a single example of German driver education being better than NY driver education.
If you paid attention the remarks about the 85th percentile, you would know that speeding on NY high ways is actually safer than following the speed limits. That is because the speed limits were lowered in the 1970s in a misguided attempt to save fuel that never worked since nobody listened to the speed limits after they stopped reflecting the 85th percentile. Many of the things you cite have nothing to do with highways where the discussion of speed limits is centered either.
As for insurance, the minimum standards are still the highest in the country. Many (myself included) go higher for insurance policies. You can write to the state legislature if you believe the minimum should be higher.
Then it is possible to replicate German success in vehicle safety in the U.S. without increasingly draconian speed limit restrictions. As for laws/culture/training, look at NYS:
1. There are annual mandatory vehicle inspections. Driving an uninspected vehicle is illegal and you cannot get the inspection certificate for your windshield unless your vehicle passes.
2. The state requires a driving test to get a license (in addition to prelicensing education requirements) and effectively forces everyone to take driver education courses every 3 years by raising insurance rates if they do not.
3. There is a points system for violations. Reach 11 points, and you lose your license. Reaching 11 points is fairly easy to do.
It is unclear how driving skill in Germany would be much different than driving skill in NYS. If you believe it should be, then you should have reasons for it that would give concrete things that can be changed.
There is no reason in the world to assume that US drivers have the same level of driving skill as German drivers.